Dark Prospects
by Warlord101
Summary: Perhaps a little lovecraftien, but there you go. Dark Prospects is a tale of dark things in the beyond (Hard to say more without spoiling things). Alone is, in effect, a Prequel to it all. Null will be he first full tale.
1. Alone Prequel

Alone  
  
John felt the control return to him and his sight focussed in on the sights of the fit, visions of which he'd rather not see. His wildly spasming arms flailed at the floor before their pace slowed and they once more fell under John's administration. His flapping mouth began to stop snapping at the tendered meat of his lax tongue. Once again, John was in charge of his body and used the regained mastery to pick himself up, take a couple of tablets from his pocket and down them with a glass of water, which would prevent another fit from happening too soon and would wash away the bitter copper taste of pennies that now lurked in his numbed mouth.  
  
The epileptic fits were a constant hassle for John, but he'd learnt to live with them and the pills would keep such instances to a minimum. Usually, though a sense of dizziness would take hold and John would feel lost in a very much familiar place until his bearings were restored and the feelings subsided. However, the feeling of being lost and bewildered was more nagging then it had ever been, though he was most certainly in his own kitchen, in his own apartment. The door to his left would surely lead to his balcony, and the door behind him to his living room. But, behind the defined walls of the room lurked something dreadful, something of anxiety and hatred. Something different. John shunned these callous sensations and opened the door that would lead on to the living room. Or, at the very least, was supposed to.  
  
The door opened up onto vistas of undeniable, infinite dark reaches that filled his eyes and mind with its bleak objection to existence until John was capable of using all his resolve and resilience in an effort to withdraw himself from such unholy views of raw negativity and slam the door to them. John fell to the ground; feeling drained from his efforts to close the door to the dark abomination but ignored this for the overwhelming sense of confusion. Was he dreaming this as his mind had disconnected from his body in the midst of an epileptic convulsion? He didn't dare open the door to see if reality had reformed itself within his living room, choosing instead to sit down on the floor for sometime, in deep thought until his confusion had faded away.  
  
John picked himself up and plucked up his courage once more, unsure whether or not he was undergoing reality before denying that any of this could be real. He clasped the door handle and pulled the door open.  
  
Before the disorientated man lay his Living Room in ordered fashion, with its windows looking out onto a busy New York street sixteen floors below and its furniture in a disarrayed fashion, huddled mostly around the TV. John stepped towards one of the windows, to take a glance outside into the night to see if life were indeed still running. He scarcely got past opening the window when he felt something amiss. But when he drew his hand back from the cold, fogged window pane, the glass refused to stay put. Instead, it left with his hand until he'd pulled it back a full foot at which point it snapped back into place like rubber. With a gasp that sounded like steam hissing, John threw himself away from the window, tumbling over his chair and crashing through the floor, which tore under his weight with a noise like paper being ripped for the floor itself now had the consistency of paper.  
  
And John fell and continued to fall through the dark abyss until he felt himself become suspended, or so he assumed. John discovered quickly that he was not, but was in fact grounded, though it lacked any almighty crash or even a thud. He simply was on the ground once more in the immeasurable darkness he had witnessed from the doorway before. Except this time, he could move. And run. And run far away from whatever abominations lurked within the shroud that he was sure were tumbling up the stygian black to take him. And in this madness that he was trapped, John did run.  
  
To where he ran, he did not know. To what he reached, he was not sure. The time that was gone was of no interest to him. After running from the infinite dark in which he was confined he had found something, un-tainted by the infernal null void which encompassed all. A door frame. A simple, white-washed, wooden door frame. Its purpose of being here seemed all to illogical, but John was sure his purpose in this unhallowed dark conflicted with logic. However, one thing John was certain of; that a door leads somewhere, even if it leads into solid brick, it leads into something more substantial then a pool of dark-matter. John was unsure of where the door would lead him, but when he opened it, pushing himself through it hastily on impulse, he understood what the door led to. He knew where the other side was and he knew that he desperately did not want to be there. Before he could truly react though, it struck him and his encounter with it was to be his end.  
  
The next day, John was found. A man in ragged clothes with a rugged face, reeking of alcohol had found his remnants but had left him shortly after, leaving him to the endless solitude of his personal oblivion. John no longer cared of people though, as in his new circumstances, he was not to know another face except that of the blank darkness forever staring back into his still, glassy eyes. Whatever he had done to deserve an eternal nothingness, forever in a paraplegic state of waking dream he did not know but it was the way of the universe. The way of reality. Humankind was born alone and would die alone. In the darkness. In the void. In the eternity. John would forever be held in the clutches of darkness, forever in a stasis of a death beyond life, beyond anything man had conjured up to be prepared for the afterlife. John had never been particularly philosophical, but, when there came a time that the darkness was accustomed with his presence and he with its lawful chaos, thoughts formed in his mind that had been still for several lifetimes. Thoughts of regrets and of sorrows, though not for his own life but for the existence of humanity. Someday, Human-kind would be extinct, and all that would be left would be skeletons of people and of buildings. The human race would be some 'bedtime story' for some other evolving being to take its place and repeat its follies and to bury the scars of the old with scars of the new. He thought of these things, and loathed them. The Earth would be just a non-diverse cycle of monotonous occurrences. May those dark beings from beyond have mercy to the pitiful place when he and his lame, blind brother and his sister in the trinity of life, death and time, rise upon it from their dead slumbers, awoken by their Priests who shall relieve the world of its ridiculous monotony and replace it with the chaotic laws of which John now followed.  
  
Back where John had fallen though, journalists had turned up, pushing and shoving and wriggling like fish brought upon a deck against the medical officers who were scraping up John and putting the bits into a plastic bag, as they had done for many others before John who had fallen from buildings. Some journalists realised how little they would learn from this and turned to neighbours and people living in the general area and to relatives and family and, 'for the juicy bits' known as filler, people who never met the man and were simply in charge of "the cities finest" or "John Kuraine's Doctor" or "Joe Blogg". They may as well have just pulled 'Edward Delapoor' or 'Randy Charter' or anyone of the streets, told them the story and asked for their opinions, which they no doubt did.  
  
John cared little for their actions though. He cared little for anything anymore.  
  
Eventually, the squabbling masses labelled journalists and reporters calmed down over 'the sensational story' and gave it a small article on any page in some small gazette having believed to have gotten their facts right. What they had extracted from the nosy neighbour across the street, who had been watching the events with horror from her binoculars (but had neglected to even pick up her phone until the next day whilst everyone was poking around the scene.), was that John Kuraine had tugged his Balcony Door open and run through the balcony's fence. Only being human though, the Press discounted the fact that he had run through the balcony because they were sure his concerned neighbour (whom he had never in fact met) had only thought she'd seen a man run through it, from the shock of actually seeing a man jump from his balcony so swiftly.  
  
John no longer cared about the events of that night though. On the grand scale of the eternity, it mattered nothing more then that it had brought him to his current situation. In the dark. Alone.  
  
Having spoken with the man's doctor, psychiatrist and parents, the Press had discovered the man to have been suffering from a multitude of psychological disorders, mostly involving his sleep. He was a schizophrenic, a narcoleptic and suffered from hideous attacks of night- terrors, where he had been seen striking violently out against unseen attackers and to flail madly, all whilst asleep. Upon waking, no matter how thorough psychological probing was, his nightmares had never been controlled, understood or even recalled by the patient himself. And now, there would be no understanding of the madness inside his subconscious, for he had died within the boundaries of sleep, unprotected, unguarded and alone.  
  
And now John cared not for being in the sole company of himself. He had, would have and underwent millennia of loneliness in the unconventional, unknown laws of a dark, shadow-land with no boundaries of time and space and logic. 


	2. The Darkness Before Dawn

Null  
  
Chapter 1  
The Darkness before Dawn  
1  
Birlmouth, Massachusetts, USA  
Tuesday, October 5th  
4:31 am  
Block 2A, Room 436 Jones sat many an hour, staring at the receding view of the world outside of his window, watching the city go through its perpetual actions of simple self-preservation. Eating. Sleeping. Working. The words he ran through his mind brought about ugly connotations of the other. Of that other. Jones shuddered at the mere thought of it. The storm bolstered itself, growing ever stronger. A tempest of rain lashed down from the heavens above, striking any unfortunate soul who would be trapped in its whirling gusts and heaving waters rushing down from the eternity of darkness above. Jones took his inspiration from the torment in the world outside his window for his paintings. And the world outside of that. Many, that is to say those who weren't turned away in disgust or bewilderment, had commented on his originality and striking potency of imagery to his paintings. He did little more then paint what the world is, beneath its skin. Dark. Sick. Pregnant. Jones was sure the world was bearing something other then normal life upon its surface. Something within its dark caverns, deep watery abysses or within the core itself. Under a dark canvas, painted thickly with breathing colours. The whirling, violent thoughts Jones understood may drive him mad but perhaps, just perhaps, he would glimpse what lay in wait.  
  
Jones continued to sit and stare from the window of his workshop, the checker-board lighting of the skyscrapers outside standing embossed on the pre-dawn twilight. And everything was fine. Until something, beyond the eyes of most but Jones, stirred.  
  
He drew himself to face his canvas, upon which he had painted something of what he understood about they beyond that lay silent, and placed his brush down. He took a ring of keys from the depths of his battered, paint-smeared trouser pocket and placed them into the lock of his old, scarred computer desk. For a moment, he stroked his bitter stubble and pondered whether or not he should go through with this.  
  
He accepted he must in the end, twisted the key and opened the drawer. Jones was curious though to how his acquaintances and, dare he say it, friends would look upon it. Would that tyrannical bitch on 3 say but a word or bat an eye-lid to the action he would take? What about that Journalist on top of the building, in 603? Would he give it a small corner in his paper, whatever it was, or would it be over-looked for some recent sports achievement? It would not particularly matter about them, naught but slightly. Jones would need to make a phone call first though. Before it could happen, he would have to leave a message to his old brother-in-arms in Edinburgh. Maybe he would get the others. Maybe he would attempt to take Jones from doing what must be done. Maybe.  
  
As far as Jones could conceive though, it would be the beginning. Of what, he could say.  
  
2  
Birlmouth, Massachusetts, USA  
Tuesday, October 5th  
4:39 am  
Block 2A, Room 603 Burbidge sat tapping away at his keyboard, on a recent case of a disappearance out in the hills of Akelly. It wasn't particularly rewarding work, bar the fact that he did get some country air inhaled and got to clear his lungs of all the smog of the city. Pity the air smelled of manure out there. It had all been rather abnormal though for such a case. Nothing had been rather clear-cut; evidence of foul-play was verging on non- existent and what was present of questionable value. A Farmer had simply gone out to refresh his supply of water, his house lacking piping due to some red-tape and 'un-strategic location' but fresh-water was usually provided by a well. After he had not come back for 3 hours, his wife had grown increasingly worried and phoned (even though they would not provide an ample water supply, there had been telephone-lines put in. Such a curious old construction.) for the law. On arrival, the well was immediately investigated but dredging up a ton of sloppy muds and dirt covered rocks from the bottom recovered no sign of him. The Officer who went into the well was also confused at the general lack of any water but of the soup like mud at bottom which, when measured, appeared to have no confirmable depth. However, there was mud spatterings at the top and on the lip of the well on arrival. Still, lately there has been no confirmation of what happened to him and the local hill-side population (about 4 or 5 remaining people) lost interest in it or moved off into the blasphemous little town of Akelly itself. Burbidge had to stay in that decrepit little, veiled town and hated just about every moment of it. The aging architecture of it's Police Station, it's dingy little Warf where the equally old fisherman say with his rod, rain or shine, that damnable old overlooking mansion with it's perfect view of the town from it's hill-side peak. Abandoned, the official statement declared. Others though, suggested it wasn't. The elderly fisherman had loosened his lips after he'd drowned his sorrows on a couple of bottles of cheap whiskey and had told things which Burbidge himself paled at hearing. Tales of deep-rooted history of the old place, it's scarcely seen but often heard former occupants. And of it's alleged current owner.  
  
Burbidge forced the memories from his mind. They had nothing to do with the task at hand. He really should stay focussed on the article. But he could not. His mind roved over many things. The disappearance. Akelly. The turmoil slicing the world outside. He turned to the window to see many streaks of rain-water washing it down thoroughly, casting the city below into a blurry, soft-focus. It was almost pleasant. But Burbidge was sure he could see something, nay, feel something. Beyond. Beyond the glass. Beyond the city. Something. Prowling. In a sudden strike of lightning outside, Burbidge felt Hell abruptly tear itself apart inside his skull, surging and whirling and tearing. He clamped a hand to his head and barrelled over, spinning his chair upward and almost kicking the computer screen. As hastily as it arrived though, the pain subsided. The shaken Burbidge righted himself once more, pulled his chair up and quickly shot glances across the room. He could feel it again. That beyondness, creeping afar, hunting. But not for him. Something rather radical would happen shortly. Something hectic. Something insufferably dire.  
  
In the quick instance of the next few seconds, there was new sound. An ear- shattering howl without comprehension. A hum, a peculiar piping noise almost mocking speech and a whispering chatter of something, something inhuman. And then, came something very human. A single, sharp scream. Some other noise, muffled by distance. And then came silence. Silence but for the rumble of thunder, the sweet patter of rain and the occasional flutter of the gusting winds.  
  
Burbidge solemnly sank to the floor, utterly confused by what happened several floors below him.  
  
3  
Birlmouth, Massachusetts, USA  
Tuesday, October 5th  
3:45 am  
Block 2A, Corridor outside Room 319 Jill Morga brought her wrist to her face and wiped her failing eyes. The scent of coffee filled her nose with vigour as she brought the polystyrene cup to her nose, inhaling its pleasant smell before taking a sip. The contrasting warmth of the coffee and the cold, wet air outside of the building made her feel cosier and sheltered. One thing, however, that brought her from such blissful thoughts was the dreary, perhaps demented artist who passed her by on the way to the staircase. What was his name again? It was a J-something or other. Common name, was it not? John? Was that right? Morga couldn't recall. Nor could she care. None-the-less, that man gave her the chills. It was not his unkempt appearance, nor even his paranoid twitches and glances he constantly sent over his shoulders, nor was it even the way he shunned the elevator and took the corridor past her room daily as opposed to going down the normal stair-case all the way to the ground floor. There was just an aura to the man with dark subtexts. He looked generally harmless though; possibly even pitiable but that abominable feeling loomed over her whenever she came across this man and so she turned an eye and went back inside her room.  
  
4  
Birlmouth, Massachusetts, USA  
Tuesday, October 5th  
4:34 am  
Block 3A, Roof Top Under the protection of a small plastic tarp and some thick galoshes, Harvey stumbled around atop the building, trying to recall where the Dish was located. He hated having to maintain the damn thing, but he felt he had to. Not to be good-natured or anything, lord no, but because he should not wish to feel blanketed in the warmth of TV. And on such an appalling night, he'd need all the warmth he could get. He looked towards the west-side of the building, and this time successfully found the small silver receiver of his beloved television. Grinning and hugging himself over for the sake of keeping warm, he approached it and began to re-adjust it.  
  
Something, though, cast his glance upon other things. He felt a compulsion to look down to the Apartment building ahead. To the fourth-floor. To the 36th room. He could see no more then filtered light though strips of metal shades. Nothing more. He continued with his work but that same urge to look again drew his attention. And this time, he saw something else. A thick, almost electrical, black shone through the shades and flecked with red bolts. It was upon seeing this menagerie of a dark light-show that caused Harvey to stumble from his place, lose his footing in the rain-slick roof- top and fall from the top of the building. Fate, it seemed, had other ideas for Harvey. He was snagged somehow by a twisted piece of tarpaulin and avoided the several story fall.  
  
5  
Birlmouth, Massachusetts, USA  
Tuesday, October 5th  
4:40 am  
Block 2A, Room 436 Jones lay on the floor. His neighbour, a stalwart man named Starkweather, stood above him, examining him, before kneeling down to check for a pulse. Surely enough, he located a beat, though broken and unsteady in pace. Checking for breathing, Starkweather uncovered no blockage in breathing, quite the contrary, he was breathing regularly with the faintest hint of a snore building behind the now grunting breaths. He held something in each palm, in his right hand was firmly fixed a .38 Revolver, but the safety was most definitely on and Starkweather was sure no shots had been fired. In his left hand, Jones held a rather precociously ornate metal construction. It gave no implication as to what it could be and, for the time, removing it from Jones' vice-like grip would be impossible.  
  
Starkweather took to his feet and approached the phone, intending immediately to contact the Emergency Services, though something seemed to snatch up his interest. At the window. Something slipped its way past the window outside, behind the closed, metal shades. He saw something dark moving through the thin slits and, on mere curiosity to satisfy, investigated.  
  
6  
Birlmouth, Massachusetts, USA  
Tuesday, October 5th  
6:28 am  
Block 3A, Roof Top Harvey awoke groggily, still suspended somehow by loops and plastics from the roof of the building. He had little recollection of how he came to be dangling there, swaying in the dying draughts in the thin, white-blue lights of dawn. Nor did he remember how he had survived the pounding rains which he did indeed remember. He did, however, recollect something a tad more disturbing which occurred after the fall. A dream, though nightmare was a better way of terming it, had struck him in his present weakened state of body and mind and had twisted his psyche slightly. He had found himself, engulfs in a all-consuming darkness but it was not darkness. It was something else. It was like lapping black eternal waters but it felt peculiarly warm and, within it, unmentionable things dwelled and writhed and dined upon other unnameable portions of living darkness.  
  
And within that maddening, lapping dark energy Harvey had found himself. But not only did he find himself in such an uninviting place. He found himself to be content there in that abominable darkness.  
  
And, finally summoning up the strength he had called upon for hours, Harvey screamed.  
  
7 Starkweather lifted a single, heavy eye-lid. For reasons beyond his knowing, his other refused even to open slightly, perhaps caked shut with sleep or some other. All he did know though was that his head was killing him, sending a horrific trauma of blunt pains throughout various parts of his body. Had he been drinking? He was sure that he had downed half a bottle of Jack Daniels before he'd headed home the night before, but he didn't think he'd had that much. He stretched an arm and, in a harsh, gravely voice, he spoke to himself: "Damn, Frank, you need to stop yourself from hitting the bottle too hard again." still unsure if he had been drunk-the end of last night was blurred to him. Coincidentally, the world itself seemed to be in pretty much a hazy, poor focus and Starkweather saw various shapes in bleached lights and darkened portions. He felt a draught of thin air hit him and surround him, making his bed feel uncomfortably cold. And uncomfortably solid. He pulled himself up and felt blindly at his bed to try and perhaps plump it up, make it slightly softer, when he came to a sharp realization. This was not his bed. This was no bed at all. This was a block of granite. 'Where in the hell are you, Frank!?' He raised a throbbing hand to his face to mop his brow, but even in his dulled view he could see, and sense, something different. His hand seemed, distorted, somehow. Longer. Wider. Sharpened? Yes, he felt that such a word could be applied to how he saw his hand. Surely though, it must be a trick of the light. His fingers ruffled through his hair as his palm gently wiped his forehead until he drew his hand further right. And felt something a miss. And felt a something that was not there and a something which ought not to be there.  
  
And, upon realizing what that something was, Starkweather screamed too, adjoining a scream he heard somewhere around that endless, darkened chamber.  
  
8  
Edinburgh, Scotland  
Tuesday, October 5th  
9:35 am (GMT)  
Residence of Arthur MacMorrow The Phone rang for a minute without an answer and remained so until Jones caught the voice on the end, announcing that he should leave a message after the beep and so, hastily, he did so: "Arthur, if you're there pick up the damn phone this instant!...Damn you! Of all the times to be away from the phone now? sigh You'll no doubt of guessed who I am when you listen. It's me, Jones. I needn't say more but I must say this: Dear God, Arthur, I was right all this time. Damn my curiosity and damn my eyes for letting me read those passages. No time to explain more. Call me back as soon as possible but in the highly-likely chance I don't respond, seek me out shortly. You will need to come to New England. No more time. Time is n-ARGHHH! DEAR-...GOD!!!" The sound of some form of electrical pulse and a howl crackle insanely loudly over the receiver. Still no one comes to answer the phone and no one would even listen to that message until many hours had passed by. 


End file.
